Analysis of Lightweight Encryption Scheme for Fog-to-Things Communication.

The paper discusses the implementation of IoT, its security issues, and techniques to deal with them. It proposes Elliptic Curve Public Key (ECC) as a lightweight encryption algorithm for securing wireless devices in fog-to-things communication.

Analysis of Lightweight Encryption Scheme for Fog-to-Things Communication

Overview of the paper:
The paper discusses about the
implementation of Iot, its various security
issues and techniques to deal with the
security issues.
Iot is one of the emerging topic in the
modern technology and innovation.
although the technology is not yet properly
commercialized, it has a lot of potential
and it is already being implemented in
various application such as smart city ,
transportation , health, business and
industrialization and other various filed too
where technology has a key role to execute
(1).
Although Iot has a lot of potential in terms
of application, one of the key issue of the
technology is resource constraint. Iot
devices have limited memory and any
security solution that is designed for the
IOT devices need to take this fact into
account as device resource is an important
parameter for the algorithm optimization
(5). As Iot devices are often small in sizes
it cannot consider to have huge amount of
storage as compared to traditional
computing devices and Iot devices often
comes with limited storage. Hence
resource constraint is an important factor
to consider in Iot environment.
In Iot environment more than one device is
connected with each other and hence
authentication is important to recognize
devices properly in the IOT network.
Hence proper technique is needed for
device authentication (5).
In order to provide support for the Iot
applications and manage security issues a
robust architecture is needed. The fog
architecture has emerged as a leading
architecture for IOT application. The fog
architecture is supported by fog
computing. Fog computing is compatible
with resource constraint of IOT devices. It
also helps to distribute the resources
properly among the IOT devices and also
provides support for secure fog-to-things
communication (2).
Security challenges:
In order to properly assess the security
schemes of the fog-to-things
communication it is important to review
the security challenges of the fog
computing.
As Iot devices are becoming widely
available in the market and it is being
considered for various sophisticated
applications, a wide range of cyber-attack
is being implemented on these devices. As
Iot is connected with internet the
traditional security challenges still applies
for the iot devices as well. However as the
traditional core network of internet is
extended to the physical world, the
security challenges is also extended for the
IOT applications (2). Extension of the core
network means the architecture has to
support more devices, more interactions as
well as communication protocol. Hence
the architecture is open to new kind cyber
threats which makes it challenging to deal
with the security issues (4). In the IOT
architecture as many devices are connected
with each other, distributed security is an
important and challenging aspect of any
IOT application and it becomes difficult to
design mechanism to implement
distributed security for fog-to-thing
communication (3). The primary reason is
the resource constraint. Hence it is not
possible to design sophisticated algorithm
and implement it for Iot devices.
Additionally the bandwidth for the

communication is also limited which
creates issues such as high latency, low
scalability and these issues creates security
challenges for wireless communication
such as iot. These security challenges need
to be properly reviewed before designing
algorithm for Iot security.
Security threats:
Although the security challenges of
traditional internet still applies for the IOT
devices, still it is quite different from the
traditional cybersecurity threats as it adds
physical dimension to the traditional
internet system (3). Hence the threat of
cyber security is transferred from digital
world associated with data to the physical
world associated with actuation. Among
the major security threats of fog-to-things,
impersonation, M-in-M, injection and DoS
attacks are the most critical threats.
Impersonation attacks refers to cyber-
attacks where the cyber criminals takes
charge of the network without proper
authorization. The cyber-criminal basically
pretend to be the legitimate user and get
access to the network. In the fog-to-things
scenario, Iot networks as well as Iot
devices can be exploited for the identity.
This kind of attacks are very much popular
in the Iot environment as it has the ability
to exploit the wireless communication
which happens to be the common platform
for communication in Iot ecosystem (4). It
also poses threats for the Iot based
communication that considers MAC and
IP address for identifying and
communicating with devices.
In addition to this DOS id another
important security threat for fog-to-things
scenario. It is a form of cyber-attack where
the cyber-criminal first finds the issues
with the device or network and with flaws
in the security the hackers get access to the
core of the system and once the access is
established, it becomes easy for the
hackers to deny the access of the
authenticate users to the system. It is
known as denial of service or DOS. It is
another popular method for exploiting iot
devices and compromise the Iot security.
Security requirement
Hence the security requirement for the fog-
to-things is secure the network from
impersonation and DOS. The principle of
encryption which is a preferred mechanism
for securing the traditional internet is
applicable for fog-to-things (3). However
some modification is needed in terms of
algorithm design so that it executes well
with the resource constraints of Iot devices
and complies with he distributed security
measures of the Iot network.
Proposed mechanism:
The paper has recommended for a
cryptographic algorithm called Elliptic
Curve Public Key or better known as
ECC. It is a light weight algorithm that
provides encryption for securing wireless
devices. The paper here also discussed
RSA algorithm and shown a comparison
between the two. Although it is seen from
the analysis that RSA considers longer key
size than the ECC algorithm (7). However
according to the authors, the principal of
RSA algorithm that the longer the key
sizes better the security is not appropriate
for the IOT devices. Although RSA
provides better encryption it requires better
processors, storage to support executions.
Hence RSA algorithm is not effective for
Iot architecture (8). Hence an alternative
mechanism is required and ECC according
to the authors, best suited for the Iot
applications.

ECC algorithm is designed on the basis of
elliptical curve theory which helps to
create encryption key that is faster, light
and effective. Although ECC creates light
algorithm, it helps to provide same
security level with fewer key seize. For
example the security level what is
provided by RSA with 1024 key seize is
achieved in as low as 164 key seize and
this feature makes ECC one of the most
preferred mechanism for IOT application
for securing the device and the Iot
network.
Conclusion:
The research has implemented proxy re-
encryption designed with ECC encryption
mechanism. This encryption is an effective
mechanism for fog-to-things as the
algorithm is light weight and also provides
similar security level compared to other
encryption algorithm which requires
increased resources as well as computing
power. The algorithm has been
implemented on actual fog-to-things
architectures developed for the research
and some important observation has been
made. The efficiency of the algorithm with
respect to the run time of encryption and
decryption process has been calculated.
The review of the implementation has
proved that the algorithm is not only
effective but it is efficient too and it can be
implemented across various architectures.
It is even applicable for providing
outsourcing of security to fog nodes which
makes IoT application more secured. Some
features of the algorithm like smaller key
seize, faster implementation and light on
resource outperforms the popular RSA
algorithm.
However it is concluded that in order to
properly integrate the algorithm with
smaller message seize it is required to
offload the security function considered
for Iot applications to fog nodes for
dealing with the resource constraints of Iot
applications. However the algorithm still
requires further validation in terms of
application and it should be reviewed like
how the algorithm performs in other
embedded devices like Arduino and
raspberry pi and according to authors
further research should done in this
context.
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